Page 91 of Livewire Witch

Bunch of elitist assholes.

“Maybe we should have gone in all guns blazing,” Roscoe says. “Made it impossible for the fuckers to ignore us. You could have whipped out your blood sword and I could have shown them what it looked like down at the docks with that pile of bodies.”

I snort. Like that would have gone down well. The Archarcans are already leery of us. They think that we’re all a bunch of uncouth savages and criminals.

Perfectly good to do backroom business with, but nothing out in the open.

“I sent through the photos Dante took and it didn’t make a difference,” I tell him. Sent them through to the city judiciary anonymously too.

Roscoe blinks at me, the cards dropping from his hands and scattering on the pavement. “You... sent her a photograph of a bunch of corpses? And you’re surprised she didn’t return your phone calls? What the fuck, dude.” He lets out a little huffed laugh and runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck, did she block your number after that?”

I shrug. Since she wasn’t responding either way, it’s kind of hard to tell if she’s blocked me since.

“I figured it would demonstrate the severity of the situation.” Now that he’s pointing it out though, I’m wondering if it was a mistake.

What can I say? I’m clearly losing it. It was only a couple of days ago, and I thought it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

“Shit.”

My phone buzzes and when I go to check it, I can see that Magnolia Winters has messaged me via email. It’s short and to the point. Still, my stomach swoops with unease.

“She’s not coming, is she?” Roscoe asks.

I shake my head, pinching the bridge of my nose. “You think it was the photos that put her off?”

He snorts. “I think any excuse will have done for them to not get involved.” Roscoe rolls up his sleeves and grins at me, entirely unbothered by this kink in our plans.

“I guess we’re on our own.”

I stare out at the street in front of us. It’s not a busy part of the city we’re in, about a mile from the sights of Arcanum Heights and the Luminary District. Still, there’s a fairly steady stream of people walking through. Nothing out of the ordinary is going on. It’s just people going about their everyday business.

“What are we gonna do, man?” Roscoe asks.

I think of all the people we know. I’m unable to stop myself imagining them being used or ground down, treated like blood slaves for Simpson and his cronies. My mind moves on to the people I care about, imagining it’s their bodies abandoned in that pile by the docks. Just the thought of it makes me want to puke.

Fuck. I have to push down the rush of fear and stress that threatens to take over my body.

Now’s not the time to give in to panic.

“I guess we’re going to have to be the ones to take action. The night of the Solstice Ball, we’ll surveil the city and be ready to spring into action if anything kicks off.” I’ll see if we can recruit some of our network to help out, too. Anyone that’s got the weakest links to Felix who’s itching for some potential bloodshed.

“Saviors of the city, huh?” Roscoe grins at me. “Let’s do it.”

26

Dante

“It’s cold as balls out here tonight.”

I don’t bother answering the tatted up mage as we make our way through the dark streets of Arcanum. It’s the night of the winter solstice and we’re heading toward the city hall where the Solstice Ball is being held.

He’s right, it is fucking freezing. Fat flakes of snow started to fall from the sky about an hour ago and the snow is already a couple of inches deep.

“So what do you think? You reckon something big’s going to go down tonight?” he asks. “Kinda weird how quiet everything’s been, though, don’t you think? Although, it’s been nice to have some downtime for once.”

It’s been like this the whole time we were in the car together, driving over. With him chatting away, like he doesn’t care if I answer, since he’s perfectly capable of carrying out a conversation entirely by himself.

Over the past few weeks of searching, we’ve had exactly zero luck in finding Simpson, or any of the other vampires involved in hurting Silver. No information either on what happened that left a mound of bodies at the docks.

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